Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
Not sure I like the term "selective breeding." It brings up thoughts of the Nazi effort to create a super race. But if you mean "natural selection" then I have to agree with you. People who, even 100 years ago, would have died in infancy or childhood, are living at least long enough to procreate, tending to infuse defective genes into the pool. We therefore have more and more people dependent upon medical intervention for their survival, placing an increasing burden upon the medical resources, causing an increase in cost.
The term is "Eugenics".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

The Nazi's gave it a lot of bad press. It was very trendy at the start of the 20'th century. The Nazi's took the idea of Eugenics and coupled it with the assumption that there exists a perfect human. As if there was an original perfect human race that has been diluted through interbreeding. But these are two completely different theories. The first one is up for debate but the second one is just plain daft. There's never been the slimmest of scientific support for it ever. It's as stupid as New Age and Phrenology.

I'm a big fan of Eugenics, for the simple reason that I think we have to.

What we're doing now is breeding humans for increased amounts of genetic errors. What an error is, is a debate in itself. Let's just call it "traits all humans would rather avoid". Things like short sightedness. It has no useful function for anybody, and is a pure nuisance. We're compensating for the increased number of errors with medicines and aid to the handicapped. Like glasses for instance, negating the handicap, and therefore spreading the defective gene. When 8000 years ago, short sightedness would have led to death, killing off the gene for good. If this keeps going, a thousand years from now we'll all have a number of genetic defects that will make us dependent on a number of gadgets for us to at all survive and breed. I don't see that as a positive development.

The error in thinking is that if we don't employ eugenics, that our bodies will remain the same, as if there's a natural state for humans. Some sort of equilibrium. As if God created us. We now know that, this is not how it works. All species and life is in constant flux. We're always evolving and adapting. A little bit for every generation. The question is, what? What is it that humanity is adapting to?

I think we should take matters into our own hands. I think we should use Eugenics and create perfect little designer babies with the looks and traits of our choice. If we're going to evolve no matter what, we might as well decide the direction of the evolution. Eugenics is the key.